Wealth

It is commonly understood as something people have that enables them to do what they want. Normally refered to as accumulated money or value. But could you perhaps look at it from a different perspective?

What if wealth was more than just the money you had, or the valuable possessions you have? Valuable in terms of exchange, in the sense, that their exchange value comes from others’ valuation on how much they are willing to pay for it. But don’t we all have things that money can’t be used on? Perhaps even, it is something non-valuable for others, it has an intimacy related to it?

It is through the making of meaning that we make things valuable? and if this is the case, perhaps is “objective”/tradeable value a construction… a societal construction… a making of meaning of what is valuable? If this were so, then, what about things that society can not translate into a monetary expression… the desire for culture, the desire for belonging… the feeling of safeness?

Cities look to me as arenas, where values are created. Perhaps, rurality enables another kind of valuation, but this joint creation of meaning, seems to have a stronger and more resilient building of meaning when it happens in large human concentrations. One can then look into what and how these urban concentrations function and we could perhaps discuss wether these agglomerations of people and resources, can be labelled as cities or urban spaces or not… and even what characteristics are key to define them.

Wealth is a much more complex process than that proposed by economics. Even though economic understanding is key to support society; without economic sustenance a society is doomed to fail and dissolve. Yet, economic sustenance is built also upon the sociality of perhaps trust, or the mere series of linkages that enable one person and another to exchange and therefore satisfy their basic needs. Desires and other luxuries are objects to be dealt separately.